I always laugh when people start claiming that humanity is doomed because the world will soon have 10 billion people and that's more than it can supply for. They miss the pure stupidity of this argument that even my 10 year old niece understands: ie, you can only get to 10 billion if there is enough food to feed them in the first place.
The population doesn't increase by itself, if can only increase in response to available food- so if we ever get to have 10 billion people on the planet than it means that we have more-or-less enough food to feed those 10 billion.
Now before you claim that this is wrong otherwise people would never starve I encourage to research the proportion of starving people with-respect-to the total global population of even the worst cases of famine. Since industrialization the portion is very small and for those who live in a capitalist society it is basically non-existent (with the exception of Ireland: the famines were caused by a English oppression and potato blight- but not by free market economy).
All cases of shortages in food have been due to non-free markets events- such as poor distribution due to political events- eg: war or local whether events such as flooding /drought or an economic system with bad/non-existent price signals used to determine the amount to grow eg:communism or plant disease. These causes are mitigated by modern democratic free market society: eg-capitalism provides large scale irrigation schemes and research into disease and stable democratic societies have reduced losses caused by conflict and allow for long term planning.

VK3AUU - actually they have been setting time frames for decades, and this or that limit, only for the forecasts to be proven completedly wrong by events.

Back in the 1960s a science fiction writer Harry Harrison, after considerable research, projected the trends of the time to come up with a nightmare world of a crowded New York where you travelled by boat and food was scare. The book "Make Room! Make Room!" was made into the 1970s film Soylent Green. This nightmare world was set in the then impossibly distant time of 1999.

Just a science fiction writer I hear you say? Then why don't we look at the career and many failed predictions of Paul R. Ehrlich, an otherwise distinquished professor of population studies who forecast 100s of millions of deaths from starvation in the 1970s.

Those are just two example. This sort of thing has been going on so long now that it has become a byword for nonsense. Time to move on.

Curmudgeon,

I'd offer the Indian experience as a pertinent example of the limits of unsustainable practice.

Do you agree that the Green Revolution in that country and the ensuing soil degradation and water table depletion is something that will rebound on the fortunes of that country in the near future?

Just because something works for a time in an unsustainable fashion, doesn't mean it has no limit.

I was always taught that the more affluent a population becomes and particularly the more educated the women folk become the less babies they want to have.

So I don't see an issue for the future of the west as it's numbers should decrease, while being propped up by the rest of the world, until the rest of the world reach a similar standard of living the west has enjoyed for quite a while, and then they will start to enjoy single and 2 child families.

Maybe cultural norms to do with large families will continue for a while but I doubt it once they take on consumerist values, and I can only see Africa remaining poor and their kids still dying of starvation and disease.

' Nothing to stop people living like that right now, and some choose to do just that, usually when they are young and fit.'

Agreed. I always laugh at all this warbling about the evils of consumerism. The very people most scared about it are the very people who aren't living in a commune saving rare species of bird and having group hugs every morning and giving all their worldly possessions to the poor.

If it's all so much fun, you have perfect opportunity to deny yourself all the wonders of capitalist consumerism you want while you're self-flagellating. Oh, I hear you, you want others to do it with you. Well, you first. I'll be right behind you, I promise.

So, for global warming Australia should make a symbolic effort with it's 1% emissions, but the individual anti-consumerist is still waiting for 'society' to change before they do. Lead the way with your wonderful radical spirit to save the world, and reduce your consumption to barely nutritious food, shelter and 1 set of clothes. Do you really even need electricity at all? Talk is cheap.

It all seems very... worthy, doesn't it, to stand on a soap-box and preach at us about limiting growth. I have asked many times, without success, how anybody believes that population reduction can be brought about in a free society. But that doesn't stop the endless sanctimony about how we are betraying our children, or whatever the current mantra might be.

thinkabit offers a simple remedy for the the shrinkists, which will ease their paranoia:

>>The population doesn't increase by itself, if can only increase in response to available food<<

But still we get the oddest of claims. Ludwig takes today's prize:

>>With a so-called zero-growth economy, we would still have growth<<

An interesting concept. How does it work?

Apparently there is "good growth" and "bad growth". Which is fine in theory, but unfortunately relies upon zero population growth to be achieved first...

>>... once the population-expansion part of the equation has been halted or greatly reduced<<

Without labouring the point Ludwig, you have placed the cart well and truly before the horse. After all, the "technological advancement, improved efficiencies" that are prerequisites for your model, will happen anyway.

In fact, they are far more likely to occur in a situation where increasing population is the driving force.

If you are able to fill in the missing piece - how we actually achieve "stable population" without trashing our economy and/or eliminating personal freedoms - I'm all ears.

Nothing about AGW for a change? Still, the argument is the same: steady as she goes, or cripple our economy NOW and drive millions of people NOW into poverty and hopeless despair, because of something that MIGHT otherwise happen at some unspecified time in the future -- when many of us will be dead and past caring, and the rest will quite likely have worked out a way to deal with it.

Move along; nothing new to see here.